FIVE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER
So this football season hasn't quite panned out the way I was hoping. Yeah, I know, USC lost, which always makes me happy, but there's still that pesky pair of losses that Texas was sporting going into last weekend's games that kind of overshadows everything else. And since I have a deadline that precludes my telling you how they actually fared on Saturday - and I am nothing if not a stickler for deadlines - I'm stuck with just hoping that they won.

For the sake of argument here, though, let's look at the current state of affairs in the Big 12, the conference in which the Texas Longhorns play. The Longhorns are, as of this writing, sitting firmly entrenched in fifth place in the Southern Division of the Big 12, a spot they actually share with Baylor University. Suffice it to say that sharing a spot at the bottom of the rankings alongside Baylor wasn't so much the picture Texas fans were planning on having at this point in the season, but that's where we are.

The fear for me at this point is that Texas will, horror of all horrors, finish in fifth place at season's end. I'm hoping this doomsday scenario proves to be nothing more than a fleeting fit of hysteria because, when you really sit and think about it, nobody remembers who came in fifth place. Seriously.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHAD WHITLOCK Chad Whitlock adds another notch to his fifth place finishes in the Cranny Cranston Bluefish Tournament. So why is he holding a Bonito?

Remember the 2000 Presidential election? The big issue surrounding that was whether or not Al Gore won the electoral vote. But more to the point here, who came in fifth? The guy's name is Harry Browne, the nominee of the Libertarian Party that year. Harry pulled in .4 percent of the popular vote at 449,225. Consequently, he received zero electoral votes, falling exactly 270 electoral votes short of the required 270 needed for election to the Presidency. And just to add insult to injury, "abstention" actually got one more electoral vote than ol' Harry, as the delegate from Washington, D.C., refused to cast an electoral vote as a way of protesting the District's non-voting status in Congress. In the 2004 election, Michael Peroutka, the Constitution Party's nominee, garnered the dubious honor of finishing fifth place, raking in .12 percent of the popular vote, or 143,630 individual votes. Kind of makes Harry look like a viable contender.

So the long and the short of the thing is that fifth place is, by all accounts, a pretty much forgotten also-ran. And it kind of makes sense, when you consider it. First through third places get the hardware, right? So you always remember who was up there on the podium. Fourth is always that heartbroken kid who was just this close to being in the top three. But fifth? Nobody cares.

Want further proof? Who came in fifth in the 110-metre hurdles at the most recent Summer Olympics?

Latvian track star Stanislavs Olijars.

Who came in fifth at the 1973 Kentucky Derby when Secretariat set the horseracing world on fire?

Restless Jet.

Who was the fifth man to set foot on the moon?

Alan Shepard.

I hope you see by now that fifth place is oftentimes an overlooked spot in the world of competitive finishes. Well, Uncle Andrew is here to make sure that at least one fifth place finisher doesn't go completely forgotten. So boys and girls, let's give it up for Chad Whitlock who, together with his father, finished in fifth place in this year's Nantucket Anglers' Club Cranny Cranston Bluefish Tournament.

And at this time of year, that's about as close to a segue as I can get.

Friends and neighbors, every year at about this time, the Anglers' Club sponsors a beach-only bluefish tournament in memory of Granville "Cranny" Cranston, the quasi-official Mayor of Great Point, who passed away in 2005. His memory lives on, though, and the competition out there for the annual trophy is fierce. And this year, my boy Chad Whitlock did his best to make Cranny proud. Unfortunately, his best efforts failed miserably, and Chad was stuck in the first-to-be-forgotten fifth place. Sorry, Chad. The truth sometimes hurts. And no, that bonito you're holding up there in the photo doesn't get you any points in the Cranny. Sorry, but rules are rules my friend.

The thing is, though, I'm not so much one to rank out somebody when he's having a bad day. Seriously. I'm not like that. And I'm certainly not here to throw Chad under the bus. Quite the contrary, in fact. I'm here to make sure that nobody forgets Chad and his second consecutive fifth-place finish. Yeah. You read that right. Chad's two-for-two in the finishing fifth department. And everybody is going to read stories about the winners, but nobody remembers the fifth place finisher. That all changes now.

And while we're on the subject of fifth-place finishes, it bears mentioning that relatively big schools of the East Coast's single most popular game fish - that being the bluefish - are still hanging around in pretty good numbers, despite Chad's apparent inability to catch them. Big metals are working well for the blues, and I've heard of more than a few stripers caught on dark Bombers off Surfside and Nobadeer after the sun goes down. So get out there and catch yourself a few fish while they're still here.

And if you see Chad Whitlock in town, give him an encouraging pat on the back. The poor kid's got a fifth-place streak going, and nobody wants to be remembered for that.

Tight lines. I